Tag: Work

It was hard to believe at first: All businesses are in the marketing business, all employees are marketing specialists.

This perspective helped me see how marketing is a collaborative effort for everyone in the company. And how marketing efforts will only succeed if everyone is in it. It doesn’t stop with the company shirts printed out and worn by the employees, with the layout, supplier and cost approved by the marketing head. It matters, too, how the employees wearing the shirts are doing. Say, in an event, a grumpy employee wearing the shirt with tatterred jeans can set a different notion about the company compared to that of an employee wearing the same shirt with a blazer and cheerfully greeting everyone.

In John Jantsch’s book Duct Tape Marketing, he defines marketing as the system in which you make people:

know

like

trust

contact

refer

you.

In a company, it isn’t just the marketing team who wants these 5 things to happen. More so, they’re not the only people who get to meet clients (Hi, Account Management.); improve on the product and service (Product Management, looking at you.); or get people fit for the role and the culture (Hello, HR.) Everyone in the company would want their company to be known, liked, trusted, contacted and referred. And the good news is everyone can take part in making that happen.

Some may probably ask, how can that happen? Every touch point of business-to-client is an opportunity to either make them know, like, trust, contact or refer you, or drive them away. Which means every email you shoot, every meeting they agree to, every interesting website article you post– all this can help or botch your chance of bringing them closer to entrusting you in providing solutions for their needs. It lies on how you do it. How thorough the planning was before execution, how able and empowered your people are, how consistently applied your company’s values are throughout your team. With the right how’s and the the 5 goals above as your why, marketing shouldn’t be a daunting task .

But how about small businesses? They’re not part of this, right? Small businesses actually have a pool of low cost marketing in their hands– their own product and service, and word of mouth. They don’t need to throw in a lot of cash to be successful at marketing their business. While everyone is trying to figure out what marketing really means and which agency to tap, the excellent work you do will speak for itself. This will be the backbone of every marketing effort. Dare I say that the excellent work is part of the marketing effort.

Marketing is a fun day-to-day grind for everyone in the company. You just might not know it, but you’re already doing a great job at it.